Freddie Whittaker | Schools Week

Make sex education compulsory to stop spread of STIs, say councils

Councils across England say compulsory sex education should be extended to academies in order to reduce the spread of sexually-transmitted infections in young adults. The Local Government Association claims the introduction of a statutory duty for academies to provide sex and relationships education could reduce the “thousands of STIs diagnosed in young people later on […]

Education committee: Government ‘yet to prove case’ for new grammar schools

The MP who chairs Parliament’s influential education committee says the government has “yet to prove the case” for new grammar schools following an inquiry into ministers’ plans to expand selection in England. Neil Carmichael says the government must demonstrate how opening new grammar schools will aid social mobility and improve education outcomes for all children after […]

Just 54 citizenship teachers were trained this year

The number of new citizenship teachers in England has plummeted since 2010, prompting calls for a more “robust” approach to preparing pupils for the modern world. Figures released by the schools minister Nick Gibb show that just 54 citizenship teachers have been trained this academic year, compared with 112 in 2014-15 and 243 in 2010-11. […]

The national funding formula didn’t have to take money from schools

The DfE should bat for the funding the school system needs, not bow down as soon as the Treasury comes calling, says Mike Cameron A couple of weeks ago I was involved in the selection of a new headteacher for the school where I am a governor. We had a field of six excellent candidates […]

Making Good Progress: the future of Assessment for Learning, by Daisy Christodoulou

A phrase much heard among impressive heads of history that I have worked with is ”kicking rubbish data upstairs to SLT”. This is not unprofessionalism; it is the desperate necessity of those determined to preserve academic integrity and to help students properly. It is a sign of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party that is school […]

Uber system will make supply teachers cheaper

New technology is changing the public sector workforce for the better, says Louis Coiffait. There may even come a day when an app will find that last-minute supply teacher… Reform this week publishes a report on the public sector workforce, Work in Progress. It describes how the workforce is changing, but also how these changes […]

Schools will not be forced to promote National Citizen Service – but it will still get £424m a year

An extra-curricular project that schools were told they had to promote in assemblies is in financial disarray yet will still be given a budget of £420 million a year by 2020. However, the plans to force schools to promote the National Citizen Service (NCS) for 16 and 17- year-olds have been abandoned. Established in 2011, […]

Michael Gove: UTCs have failed

Michael Gove, the former education secretary and a key architect of the government’s fast-unravelling university technical colleges (UTCs) programme has admitted the experiment has failed. The politician, now on the back benches following an ill-fated run for the Conservative Party leadership last year, said a “lack of academic rigour” was to blame for the downfall […]

School support staff ‘increasingly’ teaching lessons, union warns

Schools are increasingly deploying support staff to teach lessons, a survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers has found. A survey of school staff found that 78 per cent felt they did identical work to that normally carried out by supply teachers, an increase of 22 per cent since last year, when 64 per […]